


Only strength, only certainty

by EssayOfThoughts



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Character Study, Final Battle, Gen, Kinda, Leia vs Kylo, POV Leia Organa
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-25
Updated: 2016-12-25
Packaged: 2018-09-12 03:27:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,219
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9053320
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EssayOfThoughts/pseuds/EssayOfThoughts
Summary: This is the battle, at the end.Rey is tearing towards Snoke, utterly silent, nothing but the humming song of her sabrestaff dragged behind her to mark her way. In the Force she is blinding, a single bead as bright as a supernova and in her wake their milder spots of light - Leia’s and Luke’s - can make their way in, unnoticed.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TobermorianSass](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TobermorianSass/gifts).



> For my dear friend Jojo - I hope you enjoy this.

This is certain, this is absolute.

Leia must kill her son, or the whole galaxy will pay for it.

(There is a hope, the most minute of hopes, that they can pull him back from the Dark, save him, make him align with them again.)

(Leia sees this hope. Leia crushes it beneath her heel.)

 

* * *

 

Leia has always been a creature of absolutes. The Empire was Wrong. The Rebels were Right. As she grew older: Vader  _ must _ die. The Emperor  _ must  _ be killed. As the rebellion grew: The Death Star must be destroyed. Their new Jedi must be protected.

Against the First Order: Snoke must be destroyed. The Republic must be protected.

Luke has said to her that only the Sith deal in absolutes, that it is dark to divide the world so absolutely, but isn’t that what the Jedi did? Made Grey Jedi, those who trod the line between Light and Dark, Sith in name if not in nature. Dealt in absolutes themselves to say such a thing.

(Leia knows hypocrisy. Leia has seen it all her life.)

 

* * *

 

These are the options, arrayed before her:

Let Rey face Kylo, risk this young girl, as close to her and Luke as family, falling to the Dark Side, to anger, to the Force that comes from emotion and not from focus. Losing Rey forever.

Let Luke face Kylo, uncle to nephew, one final fight, one final battle, one more Jedi, lost. (Luke will fight to the brink of death, and Kylo will not give up. Kylo will fight to death, and kill Luke if he has to. He’s already killed his father.)

Let these two, Luke and Rey, their dearest assets, their most powerful allies, face Snoke, face the puppetmaster behind it all.

Let herself face Kylo.

Within this, there are two choices left, only one that she can take: she must bring Kylo back, or she must kill him, for he will kill her without hesitation.

Leia steels her heart, finds all the pain she had felt as the light of Han’s life winked out and focuses.

She cannot die. This fight, this battle, this war, will not continue without some figurehead, without some strength at the fore. That leaves one option available.

She must kill her son, or she must save him.

 

* * *

 

Her usage of the Force has never been Luke’s. Luke can use the Force easily, easy as breathing, touch minds with a thought, move objects with a motion, predict the future just by watching.

Leia uses the force by awareness, stretching outward. Leia uses the force by coiling up a core of it inside herself, stronger and stronger and built on emotion - built on certainty, built on strength, built on the ever-raw grief for Alderaan.

When she is like this, certainty built on stardust, strength built on knowledge, grief compounded ever-more by grief… she could reach outward and make the world shake.

_ (He has too much Vader in him, _ Han had said.)

_ (So do I, _ Leia thinks.  _ That is why I will win.) _

 

* * *

 

This is the battle, at the end.

Rey is tearing towards Snoke, utterly silent, nothing but the humming song of her sabrestaff dragged behind her to mark her way. In the Force she is blinding, a single bead as bright as a supernova and in her wake their milder spots of light - Leia’s and Luke’s - can make their way in, unnoticed. 

Rey is strong. Rey can evade and avoid, can taunt and tease, can drag people every whichway until they do not know up from down.

(“Trickery,” Luke had said, pulling a whistling breath in between his teeth. “She treads the line.”)

(“Yes,” Leia had said. “And she knows it. She is stronger for it.”)

Luke makes his way through, finds the core of the base, Force tricks his way past guards and into their heads and shuts down shields. Beneath his feet the planet quakes as Snoke casts his shadows about, as Rey’s light cuts through every one like a scythe.

There is a shadow creeping towards him, a patch of pitch spotted with every scatter of light that passes across it.

Luke slides away, lets Rey’s light hide his own, and Kylo turns back to the Padawan he would make his own.

Leia makes her way through. She is old and she is stiff and she has not had so much Force training as Luke. She is weighed down by grief and by anger and by certainty but she can feel her son, follows that shadow that sends back light in a scatter for every scatter that touches it.

That is her son, after all. Not one thing, or another, but some in-between creature, so desperate to find a place he never thought to create his own.

 

* * *

 

_ Ben, _ she thinks, and casts the thought out into the Force around them. In the web of the Force her light is milky as a moon’s, Kylo’s shadows are like molten tar, sticky, but catching specks of light, reflecting it. With Rey’s light a supernova around them he is shining, glowing, and she can see the sweat on his bare brow as he tries to resist the pull of the light.

_ Give in, _ she sends, and knows he won’t.

He is too stubborn, for that. Too like her, her too like Vader.

_ Stubbornness, _ she thinks, _ is in the blood. _

 

* * *

 

_ He must die, _ she thinks, and sees the shock splash its way across her son’s face. He swings his sabre outwards and she ducks. His movements are so obvious, they always have been. Choreographed by his body, by his face, by his thoughts, by his warping weight in the Force.

_ He must die, _ she thinks, stepping still closer and closer and closer, as inexorable as her father, as Ren’s grandfather.  _ He must die or he must submit. _

“You,” he says. “The Dark is in you too.”

Maybe. It doesn’t matter. She uses it for light. She has her certainty.

(These are her choices: She kills him, or she saves him.)

(He killed Han. His father, her husband. Death would be easier for them both.)

 

* * *

 

Rey tears through the room and Kylo spins to try to catch her. Rey’s smile is a snarl, his sabre met with her own and then the other end of her double-ended sabre darting in towards his gut.

“Your master,” she says softly. “Will soon be dead.”

It is a fact, nothing more, and she darts off, leaves Kylo panting and gasping, light shining off him in waves.

 

* * *

 

_ Give in, _ Leia pushes.  _ Submit. _

But he won’t.

She doesn’t have a weapon, only patience, only strength, only certainty. She doesn’t need one. The Force at her fingertips is singing.

 

* * *

 

_ “Kill me!” _ he screams. His sabre is far away, his grip loosened by tiredness and blood until it fell from his hand. 

She stands there, absolute as stone, as the dark heart of the galaxy, the vast black hole they spin around and towards endlessly.

_ Come to the Dark, _ he thinks.

_ Come to the Light, _ she thinks.

Far away they hear creaks and groans as the building strains around them. Through the Force they feel it, pressure lifting, shadows dissipating, Rey’s light, untainted, illuminating everything like a sunrise.

_ I won’t submit. _

Leia does not have to kill him. His own despair does that.

* * *

 

**Author's Note:**

> Please leave comments!


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